Vice president makes P'town pitch

Describing Provincetown as a place of "courage," Vice President Joe Biden wound up a two-day fundraising trip to Cape Cod with a stop at the place the Pilgrims first landed.

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By Jason Cook

capecodtimes.com

By Jason Cook

Posted Aug. 27, 2012 at 2:00 AM

By Jason Cook

Posted Aug. 27, 2012 at 2:00 AM

» Social News

PROVINCETOWN — Describing Provincetown as a place of "courage," Vice President Joe Biden wound up a two-day fundraising trip to Cape Cod with a stop at the place the Pilgrims first landed.

Accompanied by his wife, Jill, Biden spent Saturday night at the Wayside Inn in Chatham, attending a fundraiser.

On Sunday, he was at the Pilgrim Monument and Museum to raise more money and the spirits of a crowd of nearly 300 people.

Bryan Rafanelli — CEO of Rafanelli Events, who planned Chelsea Clinton's 2010 wedding — welcomed Biden to the Cape tip by joking, "welcome to the end of the Earth." Biden answered back, "I don't think this is the end of the Earth, but the beginning."

The cost of tickets to Sunday's invitation-only fundraiser ranged from $250 for general admission to $25,000, which bought a photo opportunity with the vice president.

In his nearly hourlong speech, Biden touched on a multiplicity of topics but focused mainly on civil rights.

"Many of you have advanced civil rights at great expense," he said during his visit to a town long recognized for its lesbian, gay and transgender residents and visitors. "If I had to use one adjective to describe this community it'd be courage. You have summoned the courage to speak out, to come out. We owe you."

Biden's wife echoed his sentiments.

"The road to equality is long," she said.

The vice president said the efforts of the LGBT community have not only advanced their own civil rights, but the "civil rights of every straight American."

"You are freeing the soul of the American people," Biden said, earning loud applause from the crowd.

Biden also made a pitch for U.S. Rep. William Keating, D-Bourne, who attended the fundraiser.

"You don't have to wonder about him," he said, calling Keating a "stand-up guy." Biden also addressed the presidential race, ticking off what he sees as key differences between the Obama administration and the presumptive Republican candidates, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.

"They are both decent, honorable men," he said. "But they have fundamentally different belief systems."

Biden said the November election is a race between the "starkest contrasted candidates in recent memory."

Biden referenced the recession that began in 2008, tying what happened then with what he believes will happen should Romney be elected president.

"We've seen this movie before. We can't go back to those days," he said.

He appealed to the middle class, saying, "We know this country is not built from the top down, but from the middle up."

Too many "hardworking Americans" have been stripped of their dignity in the years since the housing market collapse, Biden said.

Obama, he said, "is determined to change the trajectory of this country. They have slowed our progress," Biden said of the Republican Congress, "but they have not stopped it."